Inheritance Quotes

“When people fuse with a group, their personal group identities become functionally equivalent – if you attack the person, you unleash the rage of the group and if you attack the group, it is taken personally.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“members of the revolutionary battalions – those who fought on the frontline – were more likely to choose their comrades. They felt more fused with their fellow fighters than with their own flesh and blood.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“Some groups inevitably suffered more fitness-reducing events – experiences that negatively impacted their ability to survive and pass on their genes. And these were the groups that ended up being more cooperative than those that suffered less. What’s more, these positive effects on cooperativeness were stronger when shared suffering resulted from intergroup conflict than from natural disaster. In short, doing badly made the group pull together more tightly.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“the ability to unify populations behind hawkish policies was once both a curse and a blessing: for all its horrors, violent conflict served as a primary mechanism for growing social complexity. Today, the opposite is the case. The increasingly destructive power of today’s weaponry means that warfare driven by tribal instincts writ large can only lead humanity down a path of self-destruction. The”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“Turchin, P., ‘The Evolution of Moralizing Supernatural Punishment: Empirical Patterns’, in Larson, J., Reddish, J., & Turchin, P. (Eds.), The Seshat History of Moralizing Religion, Beresta Books (in press).”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“One explanation for the rise and spread of human sacrifice is that it was a successful cultural adaptation, allowing the groups adopting it to become larger, wealthier, and better organized, enabling them to spread and to conquer their rivals. If”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“The gods demanded that we accept extreme forms of inequality. And nowhere was this dogma more strikingly expressed than in the institution of human sacrifice. Elites that were able to use institutionalized violence to strike terror into the general populace were better able to sustain extreme inequality and therefore to expand their dominions through the exercise of brute force.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“Baird, D., Fairbairn, A., & Martin, L., ‘The Animate House, the Institutionalization of the Household in Neolithic Central Anatolia’, World Archaeology, Vol. 49, No. 5, pp. 753–76 (2016).”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“Whitehouse, H., McQuinn, B., Buhrmester, M. D., & Swann, W. B., Jr., ‘Brothers in Arms: Warriors Bond Like Family’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), Vol. 111, No. 50, pp. 17783–5 (2014).”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“Similar tactics were used by the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, who required new recruits to participate in ritualized murders, often including the killing of family or community members.12 Even conventional armies may inflict physical and psychological tortures on new recruits as part of their training.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

“explanation for the evolution of overimitation, then, is that it provides a uniquely efficient way of passing on useful skills from proficient experts to would-be learners. But I have long wondered whether there is a second explanation for overimitation – that we imitate others not only to learn useful skills, but to be part of a group. After all, people routinely copy behaviour that has no instrumental value whatsoever, simply out of a desire to belong.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World